English II
CTA #1 – Fall 2013
This Boy’s Life: Close Textual Analysis
Because this sort of assignment will be on the MCAS and then the SAT, and because you do better on things you
are familiar with, we are going to do an assignment that involves “close textual analysis” (CTA for short). To
successfully complete the essay, follow these (relatively) easy steps:
Step 1: Read the passage carefully with the prompt (task) in mind. Mark the passage up: underline key words and
phrases, words that, for whatever reason, stick out. Look in particular at verbs and adjectives; even if you
don’t know the meaning of every word, get a feel for the mood/emotion of the passage.
Step 2: Examine what you have noticed in step one and make notes on the side. Generate your thesis.
Step 3: Write your thesis, which should provide a specific answer to the question/prompt.
Step 4: Organize your essay. Do not summarize the passage or simply discuss it: ANALYZE. You want to refer to
the passage specifically as you support your GENERAL position (thesis) with SPECIFIC evidence.
Types of support
TELL (implicit): your words (summary or paraphrase)—less effective
PRESENT (explicit): the author’s words (specific quotes)—more effective
INTERPRET and ANALYZE: a combination of your words (INTERPRET and ANALYZE) and the author’s
words (showing specific EVIDENCE to support what you’ve said).—most effective
Practice using bit and pieces of the author’s words and your words together.
Keep in mind a typical body paragraph structure:
IDEA – Topic Sentence
DEVELOPMENT/EXPLANATION of IDEA
Transition to EXAMPLE (specific detail – for CTA, a bit of the excerpt)
Presentation of EXAMPLE
ANALYSIS of EXAMPLE (a couple of sentences)
Question: Read the following passage from This Boy’s Life, in which the narrator (named Jack) who now has a
stepfather named Dwight, discusses his feelings about his actual father. Write an essay in which you discuss the
narrator’s (named Jack) feelings toward his father and how those feelings change over time. Specifically, consider
how the tones of each paragraph reflect how his feelings about his father change. Remember that diction (word
choice) and syntax (sentence form and structure) inform tone (how the speaker feels about the subject).
I also missed my father. My mother never complained to me about him, but sometimes Dwight would make
sarcastic comments about Daddy Warbucks and Lord High and Mighty. He meant to impugn my father for being
rich and living far away and having nothing to do with me, but all these qualities, even the last, perhaps especially
the last, made my father fascinating. He had the advantage always enjoyed by the inconstant parent, of not being
there to be found imperfect. I could see him as I wanted to see him. I could give him some sterling qualities and
imagine good reasons, even romantic reasons, why he had taken no interest, why he had never written to me, why
he seemed to have forgotten I existed. I made excuses for him long after I should have known better. Then, when I
did know better, I resolved to put the fact of his desertion out of my mind. I visited him on my way to Vietnam, and
then again when I got back, and we became friends. He was no monster—he’d had troubles of his own. Anyway,
only crybabies groused about their parents.
This way of thinking worked pretty well until my first child was born. He came three weeks early, when I
was away from home. The first time I saw him, in the hospital nursery, a nurse was trying to take a blood sample
from him. She couldn’t find a vein. She kept jabbing him, and every time the needle went in I felt it myself. My
impatience made her so clumsy that another nurse had to take over. When I finally got my hands on him I felt as if I
had snatched him from a pack of wolves, and as I held him something hard broke in me, and I knew that I was more
alive than I had been before. But at the same time I felt a shadow, a coldness at the edges. It made me uneasy, so I
ignored it. I didn’t understand what it was until it came upon me again that night, so sharply I wanted to cry out.
It was about my father, ten years dead by then. It was grief and rage, mostly rage, and for days I shook with it when
I wasn’t shaking with joy for my son, and for the new life I had been given.
But that was still to come. As a boy, I found no fault in my father.
impugn – v – to criticize or verbally attack
grouse – v – to grumble; to complain